The fine art of Post and Beam Construction: Building from the ground up the Old Fashioned way

Timber Framing, or Post and Beam construction, continues to be a popular for its lasting beauty and natural construction.

The rolling hills of Ashfield, Massachusetts offer some of the most beautiful and peaceful scenery in all of New England.

While the Autumn scenery is still breathtaking, the countryside isn’t as quiet as it usually is.

We’ve all heard the expression, ‘you can’t fit a square peg into a round hole’. But as Ashfield’s Will Elwell proves every day, you can fit an eight-sided peg into a round hole.

And this week Will and his eclectic crew are hammering away at an age old New England tradition.

“I think it’s the clunk. When the timbers go together it clunks,” said Master Carpenter Andy Inganni. “And you know it’s just fitting right in and it makes a nice solid sound.”

The solid and sweet sound of good old fashioned Yankee Ingenuity echoing across the Berkshire foothills.

Will Elwell, his wife Donna, and a collection of Yankee Craftsmen were doing it the old fashioned way, building a post and beam frame structure that will last several lifetimes.

In a twenty four by forty eight structure there is 10-thousand feet of timber cut from a nearby forest. The wood is cut and milled by hand, and 400-plus oak pegs are hammered into holes that hold the structure together. Add some sweat equity, and some good old fashioned mathematics, and you’ve got the making of a classic piece of Americana.

“Pythagoras comes into play quite a bit,” said Will Elwell, owner of Elwell Construction in Ashfield, Massachusetts.

“ So there’s quite a bit of math, and it’s interesting to figure it out on paper and then spend a couple months cutting the dimensions. Then seeing it manifest itself in three dimensions. So it’s nice to see it all come together.”

And the post and beam structure does come together … literally.

It goes like this. At the the end of a post there’s a tenon. On the beams there’s a mortise. They fit together supported by a brace. And then comes the trennel, Old English for tree nail.

“Pretty much you could call this an organic structure,” said Elwell. “There’s no man made materials in it. It’s all straight from the woods. And it seems to work.”

“The idea is that the structure won’t come down,” said Ingianni. “ The roof might blow off. You might get some rotten siding, but the structure will be here for hundreds of years.”

When the structure is complete it will house a workshop, a farm stand, and solar panels will make it energy efficient.

For now it’s a real life history lesson. And for Will Elwell, a true labor of love.

“It’s my therapy, said Elwell. “ I’d rather do this than have another job and then have to go to therapy. It just feels like a privilege to be able to build like this.”

To find out more about Will Elwell and his post and beam project you can log onto his website at www.willelwell.com.